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Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Successful writer and scholar Jonathan Merrick falls under the spell of the irresistible, bewitchingly beautiful Ligeia. She's fighting a fatal illness and she will stop at nothing to defeat death, her one true enemy. She steals other people's souls and on her quest to immortality she tricks Jonathan into supporting her work, breaking him apart from his fiancé Rowena and pulling him into her dark, mysterious world. They settle down in an old manor by the Black Sea where Ligeia's everlasting presence slowly drives Jonathan to madness...

Filmed in:

St. Louis
Maplewood
University City
Kirkwood

Special notes: Michael Madsen is in the movie! That's pretty big time, right?

"The Informant" is a true story that parallels a mixture of "A Beautiful Mind" and "The Insider" -- where real life Ph.D.s had done something extraordinary. Based on Kurt Eichenwald's 2000 book, "The Informant" is the tale of Mark Whitacre (played by Matt Damon), an Ivy League Ph.D. who was a rising star at Decatur's Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) in the early 1990s. He wound up blowing the whistle on the company's price fixing tactics and became the highest-ranked executive to ever turn whistleblower in US history. Whitacre secretly gathered hundreds of hours of video and audio tapes over several years to present to the FBI which became one of the largest price fixing cases in history. In the story -- a dark comedy / thriller in director Steven Soderbergh's hands -- Whitacre's good deed dovetails with his own major infractions and struggle with bipolar disorder

Filmed in:

St. Louis
Lambert International Airport

Special notes: Matt Damon's the star. Steven Soderbergh (Michael Clayton, Syriana) is the director. That's even BIGGER time! I'm guessing they only filmed in Lambert though. Who knows?

After suffering an injury during a routine patrol, hardened sergeant TK Poole is granted a one-month leave to visit his fiancé. But when an unexpected blackout cancels all flights out of New York, TK agrees to share a ride to Pittsburgh with two similarly stranded servicemen: Cheever, an older family man who longs to return to his wife in St. Louis, and Colee, a naive private who's pinned her hopes on connecting with a dead fellow soldier's family. What begins as a short trip unexpectedly evolves into a longer journey. Forced to grapple with old relationships, broken hopes and a country divided over the war, TK, Cheever and Colee discover that home is not quite what they remembered, and that the unlikely companionship they've found might be what matters the most.

Five years in the making, ONE LUCKY ELEPHANT follows the poignant journey of circus producer David Balding as he tries to find a nurturing and permanent home for Flora, the 18-year-old African elephant that he rescued as an infant, raised as his "daughter" and made the star of his circus. David's love for Flora is put to the ultimate test when he realizes he made a terrible mistake keeping her as a solo elephant, and decides to retire her from the circus after 17 years of performing. Knowing Flora will outlive him, and with his health and finances becoming an issue, David sets off on a quest to find a home for Flora can live freely with other elephants. This complicated task begins with Flora's final circus performance in St. Louis and takes us on an emotional trek across America, then to Africa and back. We follow David's journey as he discovers just how difficult it is to find a proper home for an elephant in a world that reveres these animals for their majesty yet slaughters them for their ivory, adores them as cuddly Dumbos yet brands them "rampaging creatures". ONE LUCKY ELEPHANT raises critical issues about the well-being and future of the hundreds of thousands of endangered and exotic animals kept in captivity, the overdevelopment and destruction of their natural habitats, our intense and often damaging relationship with wild animals, and how all these issues have impacted the life of one very lucky elephant.

About Me

I'm a 24 year old planning student finishing up my master's at the University of New Orleans. I love my hometown and care deeply for it--which is why I continue to maintain this blog despite considerable physical distance between me and my city.
Circumstances have me in Baltimore now.
If you have any questions, please email me at matthewmourning@gmail.com.